method

shellescape

v1_9_3_392 - Show latest stable - 0 notes - Class: Shellwords

shellescape(str) public

Escapes a string so that it can be safely used in a Bourne shell command line.

Note that a resulted string should be used unquoted and is not intended for use in double quotes nor in single quotes.

open("| grep #{Shellwords.escape(pattern)} file") { |pipe|
  # ...
}

String#shellescape is a shorthand for this function.

open("| grep #{pattern.shellescape} file") { |pipe|
  # ...
}

It is caller’s responsibility to encode the string in the right encoding for the shell environment where this string is used. Multibyte characters are treated as multibyte characters, not bytes.

Show source

# File lib/shellwords.rb, line 73
  def shellescape(str)
    # An empty argument will be skipped, so return empty quotes.
    return "''" if str.empty?

    str = str.dup

    # Treat multibyte characters as is.  It is caller's responsibility
    # to encode the string in the right encoding for the shell
    # environment.
    str.gsub!(/([^A-Za-z0-9_\-.,:\/@\n])/, "\\\\\\1")

    # A LF cannot be escaped with a backslash because a backslash + LF
    # combo is regarded as line continuation and simply ignored.
    str.gsub!(/\n/, "'\n'")

    return str
  end

shellescape

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